1026 KM Road Trip in 35 hrs

A few days back, I had a wild idea (as usual), to do a Road Trip in and around Gujarat State for about 2 days. 

The idea was to drive as far as possible and come back in about 2 days.  Someone would ask, Why? Why would you do that?  I would say, no particular reason!

I asked around to find out if anyone was free and was interested in taking the road trip.  A couple of my cousins showed interest in the idea.  The car was ready, the cousins were read and so was I.  Next morning i.e. on Sunday, at about 1030 hrs, I started off my road trip across Gujarat.

We had no particular agenda in mind, just wanted to get on the road and drive.  My first task was to pickup my cousins from a place called Anand (The place where I did my engineering from) it was around 130 KM from where I stay.  Once we all got on board, it was just the drive.

We visited quite a few places on our way.  But in this post, I wanted to share a few incidents that made me really understand the mean of the saying: It happens only in India

First we came across a guy, who was towing a car with his vehicle.  It might look like a pretty ordinary site, but have a look at the next photo and decide.

A guy on bike towing a car!

This was no ordinary scene, the guys who was towing the vehicle was on a bike and he was towing a car!  It was truly awesome to actually see it.

Next, we came across another very different but awesome scene.  Have a look at the following images and be amazed for yourself.

Calf drinking milk from a lioness!

A lion cub drinking milk from a cow!

Yep, its true.  Believe it or not, we did have a look at those sculptures.  I was completely blown away looking at these sculptures!  I don't know what to deduce from these sculptures, but may be, one of the messages could be To Live And Let Live!

Next, while I was driving, I noticed something unusual in a field next to the road on which I was driving.

Peacocks roaming around in an open field!

More Peacocks roaming around

I couldn't believe my eyes.  There were around 30-40 (may be more) Peacocks and Peahens freely roaming around in an open field.  The site was simply amazing!  We were not passing through any jungle or restricted area.  We were passing passing by on a State Highway and we got an opportunity to see this magnificent creature freely roaming around in the fields.  Truly awesome!

On the way we passed by a famous Jain Temple.  Jain temples are famous for their stone carvings.  Here is a glimpse of what we saw

Detailed stone carvings beautifully done!

The stone carvings were extremely detailed and very beautifully done.  It was a very beautiful site.

In a very remote village (about 35KM from Pakistan border) we saw a beautiful and colorful template

Beautiful Temple on the way painted with bright colors!

The template looks extremely beautiful and was painted with bright colors.  The colors gave a unique beautiful feel to the template.

These were some of the unique experiences we had on our road trip. 

In a small village near the Gujarat-Rajasthan border we decided to start the return journey.  First I dropped my cousins at Anand and then reached home at about 2130 hrs.

The cars odometer was suggesting that in total we had traveled around 1026 KM and I had been out on the road for about 35 hrs.  This was an awesome trip, as you can see I had a lot of It happens only in India moments.

This post would not be complete, if I didn't mention two more things which impressed me quite a bit.

• Google Navigate - Awesome piece of software.  We traveled to lot of remote locations but, Google Navigate was spot on.  It could find and navigate the driving directions extremely well.  I was pretty impressed to learn that it could find ways to get to some of the most remote locations.
• Roads of Gujarat - During the entire trip we never had any patch of bad road.  Roads where really well maintained, even the roads to remote villages were in good condition.  A big thumbs up to the government for doing a great job at this.  I totally agree with Mr. Bachchan when he says "kuch din to gujaro gujarat me"  Its definitely worth a visit!